Woolf sightings: The Goon Squad and a pond of our own

For the first time since I started tallying weekly Woolf sightings, I have fewer than 20 on my list. This week they range from a mention in an interview with Pulitzer-prize-winning author Jennifer Egan to a mother’s stream of consciousness during “the talk” with her young daughter.

How ‘the Goon Squad’ came to be, CNN International
Other inspirations: Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” (one of my favorite books ever), Robert Stone, Virginia Woolf and the great 19th-century storytellers, especially Dickens, George Eliot and Zola. CNN: In addition to your career as a novelist, …

Winning characters, Malaysia Star
In fact, the great works feature people who are so unusual and so memorable that they earn a place for themselves beyond the pages of a book – think the titular character in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, Tom Ripley from The Talented Mr Ripley by …

On the upside, Hindustan Times
Author-critic Virginia Woolf, former Russian president Boris Yeltsin and actor Catherine Zeta Jones are among some people diagnosed with bipolar illnesses. But it’s anything but glamourous. “When there are lows,
you are like a vegetable. …

But what do they do with their legs?, The Guardian
I imagined Virginia Woolf contentedly sitting in a pond of her own. And then drowning. “Where is it?” Mulan asked, her eyes bigger than ever. “It’s in our lower abdomen, inside us, below our belly button, above our vagina.” I had managed to be specific …

Agony ancients, Financial Times
The title chapter on learning to drive, for example, ranges from a meditation on freedom, Virginia Woolf and the film Thelma and Louise, through how machines challenge what it means to be human, to the Romantic idea of the quest – then back to freedom …

THE LABORATORY, Spencer Daily Reporter (blog)… but that doesn’t mean you should limit yourself to only that space. Inspiration can strike anywhere, and you must remain open to the process. “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf.

Writing with Cats, New Yorker (blog)(Perhaps a disclaimer is in order: I do in fact have a cat, and a vaguely literary one at that: she’s called Orlando, after the Virginia Woolf novel; her first week in my care was a little confusing, gender-wise.) The other day the folks over at …

More than black and white, The Hindu
According to Virginia Woolf, the reader “differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinion of others. …

Onstage calendar: April 22, 2011, Ventura County Star
“Goat”: The Elite Theatre Company will present the world premiere of Arthur Kraft’s drama about what might have happened if a psychologist had prevented writer Virginia Woolf from committing suicide in 1941. 8 pm Fridays and Saturday, 2 pm Sundays, …

A cultural critic attends the NHL playoffs, LA Observed
Brian Kennedy wrote “Growing Up Hockey” (Folklore 2007) and “Living the Hockey Dream” (Folklore 2009), as well as a number of academic essays on topics from Henry James to Virginia Woolf. His last post for Native Intelligence was on managing fear in …